/ARTS WEEKLY/ VENEZUELA: A Tour Down Entertainment’s Memory Lane

By Humberto Márquez Reprint | | Print |

By Humberto Márquez

CARACAS, Feb 10 2004 (IPS) - Images, sounds and settings at La Montaña revive memories – at least for the older crowds – of Venezuelan films, TV programmes, radio shows and even the circus, from several decades ago.

For the younger visitors, this unique theme park offers hands-on lessons about the illusion-making of the entertainment industry during their grandparents’ era.

La Montaña de los Sueños (Mountain of Dreams), a seven-hectare park on a mountainside in the western Venezuelan state of Mérida, provides an escape from the city and the heat, and a glimpse into the past.

Entering the park, “dreamers” see the costumes, settings, movie posters and projections about the making of the Venezuelan film “Una vida y dos mandados” (One Life and Two Trails), by Alberto Arvelo, a contender in 1997 for the U.S. film industry’s Academy Award for best foreign film.

The film is the tale of a boy in the Venezuelan Andes, in the 1930s, growing up in the middle of families dedicated to hard work and a tranquil life… until they kill each other out of jealousy.

Why an exhibit about that particular film is at the entrance of the new park is easy to explain: its producer is the same person who developed the theme park, Alexis Montilla. He built La Montaña de los Sueños with materials gathered throughout the film career that he began with Arvelo.

“It’s a gift that my father gave himself,” says his son, Gerardo Montilla, park director.

Visitors can see hundreds of films, including those by Mexico’s Mario Moreno, the famed “Cantinflas”, and they can step into radio, film and TV studios, where – for a few minutes -they can try their hand as director, producer, announcer or actor in a story from Venezuela’s entertainment history.

The Mountain of Dreams is the third theme park that Montilla has developed in the past two decades, providing entertainment for tourists who flee the heat of the Caribbean coast or the jungle interior to seek the coolness of the green mountains and the hospitality of the farm villages in the Andes, some 600 km southwest of Caracas.

The first park, Los Aleros, opened in 1984. A reproduction of a typical Andean village of the 1930s, it includes a Bolívar Plaza (every town has a square named after the independence hero Simón Bolívar), a barbershop, bakery, post office, a chapel, general store, and even a cemetery.

Los Aleros has its own currency, the ‘morocota’, old-time theatre, food and beverages from the era – all the elements necessary for an enjoyable afternoon.

Montilla, born to a farming family, had little formal schooling, and worked a series of odd jobs until the mid-1970s, when he began to organise parades for the annual festivals of Mérida, capital of the state of the same name.

“There he tasted the desire of the visitors from the other parts of the country to identify the footprints of the Andeans who a hundred years ago marched on Caracas,” wrote critic Nabor Zambrano, in reference to the wars of the Andes for political power in the late 19th century.

Los Aleros proved so successful that Montilla and his entire family embarked on another such project in 1988, La Venezuela de Antier (The Venezuela of Yesteryear), which depicts scenes from all across the country when it was ruled by dictator Juan Vicente Gómez (1908-1935).

This second park recreates the architecture, folklore, food, music, customs and history of 12 different regions.

“The day we opened, 243 people cam. Now, on Good Friday (of the Roman Catholic Holy Week) we receive 5,000 visitors. The annual average is around 100,000,” says his son, Gerardo Montilla.

“The revenues from Los Aleros were reinvested in La Venezuela de Antier, and the income from those two has gone to La Montaña de los Sueños since last year, without much study, all based on the creativity of my father,” he said.

A hundred antique and classic cars, collected by the Montilla family, are part of the park scenery, such as the setting of a drive-in movie theatre, and are themselves a centre of attraction.

Ninety out of 100 visitors to the park are Venezuelans, and half come from Caracas and its surrounding areas. Among the foreigners, most come from Colombia, Spain, Ecuador, Aruba and Germany.

For the Montilla family, and the 2,000 people directly or indirectly involved in the theme parks, this form of “cultural tourism”, the re-creation of the past, means healthy dividends.